Random Mavs News & Articles

[EricaLubarsky]

Those two are ripped but I particularly like Dirks comment

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Originally Posted by EricaLubarsky

Those two are ripped but I particularly like Dirks comment

I do wonder sometimes if these guys overkill it with muscle training. The quickest guys up and down the court aren't always the most muscular.

[SMC0007]

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

I do wonder sometimes if these guys overkill it with muscle training. The quickest guys up and down the court aren't always the most muscular.

Muscle training? Lol

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Originally Posted by SMC0007

Muscle training? Lol

Weight lifting? Good lord, get out on a Sunday if that's going to be the reply.

[saclare]

Good to see them working hard. And I guarantee those guys who are the fastest lift a lot of weights in their respective off seasons. Some guys just don't have the genetic ability to look ripped but are still in insane shape.

[SMC0007]

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

Weight lifting? Good lord, get out on a Sunday if that's going to be the reply.

I should get out and train my muscles more on Sundays

[MavzMan]

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

I do wonder sometimes if these guys overkill it with muscle training. The quickest guys up and down the court aren't always the most muscular.

True but Kleber and Dwight could use some extra muscle and size to fight for position. Dwight improved last year, but he was still getting pushed around a lot. Also that photo is showing maximum biceps flex. They are nowhere near getting body builder girth.

[thewizard]

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

I do wonder sometimes if these guys overkill it with muscle training. The quickest guys up and down the court aren't always the most muscular.

Tell that to the Antetokounmpo brothers:

[SMC0007]

Yea. I think it's extremely beneficial in almost all aspects to strength train.

[DevinHarriswillstart]

I just remember Chandler Parsons slowing down the when he bulked up before his first Mavs season. He was clearly slowly than when he was on Houston. Yes, the knee injuries were the main culprit in the end, but he was slow even before them.

[EricaLubarsky]

Africa game on

No Smith. Guess he got cut?

Barnes red hot from three

[EricaLubarsky]

Barnes 14-11 in the Africa game. Not bad.

Two things he did really well this game: rebound and shoot threes

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Smith got cut? Really? Wonder why.

[EricaLubarsky]

7. DALLAS MAVERICKS
2017-18 RECORD: 24-58; missed playoffs

ADDED: F Kostas Antetokounmpo (No. 60 pick, 2018 Draft); G Jalen Brunson (No. 33 pick, 2018 Draft); G Luka Doncic (No. 3 pick, 2018 Draft); C DeAndre Jordan (one year, $22 million); C Chinanu Onuaku (acquired from Rockets); F Ray Spalding (No. 56 pick, 2018 Draft); F Ding Yanyuhang;

LOST: G Kyle Collinsworth (waived); G Seth Curry (signed with Blazers); G Yogi Ferrell (signed with Kings); F Doug McDermott (signed with Pacers); F Jonathan Motley (traded to Clippers); C Nerlens Noel (signed with Thunder)

RETAINED: G/F Wesley Matthews (picked up player option); F Dirk Nowitzki (one year, $5 million)

THE KEY MAN: CEO Cynthia Marshall. The former AT&T executive was put in charge after Sports Illustrated’s explosive story last February detailing a toxic workplace for female employees on the team’s business side, with sexual harassment rampant and no relief forthcoming from the supervisors who should have provided it. Marshall has been fast at work changing the business side culture, as separate investigations of who was responsible for allowing the previous environment to fester wind down. After their results are made public, it will be Marshall who will have to both enact their recommendations and sell the public that owner Mark Cuban’s organization has been fumigated for good.


Luka Doncic give the Mavs hopes for a brighter future.
THE SKINNY: Dallas is banking that the 19-year-old Doncic is not only the real deal, but that he can come out of the gate in the NBA after starring in Europe and immediately give the Mavs a boost. There’s a large body of work suggesting Doncic will do just that, and accelerate the Mavs’ rebuild. Second-year guard Dennis Smith Jr.’s improvements should also speed up, and Jordan’s presence should start to close the sieve that has plagued Dallas’s defense the last couple of years. Losing both Curry and Ferrell will hurt the Mavs’ guard depth, though, and Brunson won’t be able to work in slowly.

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Mavs hire former Wolves shooting coach Peter Patton.

[EricaLubarsky]

almost every Wolves player slid backward in terms of shooting and we hire the shooting coach?

[dirt_dobber]

Originally Posted by EricaLubarsky

almost every Wolves player slid backward in terms of shooting and we hire the shooting coach?

puzzling.
Who was our previous shooting coach?

[Bryan_Wilson]

Dirk's teammates.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Bryan_Wilson

Dirk's teammates.

LOL

[Scoobay]

Originally Posted by Bryan_Wilson

Dirk's teammates.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Bryan_Wilson again

[Underdog]

Bob Voulgaris hired as Mavs' director of quantitative research and development
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...ch-development

[j0Shi]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Bob Voulgaris hired as Mavs' director of quantitative research and development
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...ch-development

You wonder why this dude hasn't been picked up by somebody for so long. He did work with the Grizzlies (?) a couple years ago for a brief stint, but never since.

He legitimately developed software that did forecast betting outcomes (and player performance) more properly than Vegas.

[Underdog]

Yeah, underrated move by the Mavs, no doubt.

[BPo001]

Originally Posted by j0Shi

You wonder why this dude hasn't been picked up by somebody for so long. He did work with the Grizzlies (?) a couple years ago for a brief stint, but never since.

He legitimately developed software that did forecast betting outcomes (and player performance) more properly than Vegas.

Probably because he is/was a professional gambler.

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Great breakdown of Dennis and Luka before the big game tonight...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oThtvDwzqqw

[j0Shi]

Originally Posted by BPo001

Probably because he is/was a professional gambler.

Gotta pay him more than he makes then

[Dolencd]

Probably should have posted this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfWqQXZJyTw
Radio documentary of Luka Doncic, made by national Radio Slovenia.
Enjoy!

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Barnes said he was hopeful to play on Saturday and should go be able to do a full practice on Friday via Dwain Price.

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Now Barnes unlikely vs Minny via Price. Ugh...

[j0Shi]

http://www.espn.com/nba/insider/stor...off-contenders

qSQ: quantified shot quality

During the first few games of this season, no team's results have been more removed from the quality of the shots they're getting and allowing than Dallas. The Mavericks' offensive qSQ (54.1 percent) ranks third in the league, but their actual 51.1 percent effective shooting is just 17th -- worse than league average. It's the reverse at the other end of the court, where Dallas' opponents have the ninth-worst shot quality (51.7 percent) but have actually posted a league-high 57.6 percent eFG.

[...]

When the shooting evens out, it should reveal the Mavericks playing above-average defense. They've allowed opponents 3-point attempts at a league-average rate and rank in the top 10 in preventing shots at the rim.

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Originally Posted by j0Shi

http://www.espn.com/nba/insider/stor...off-contenders

qSQ: quantified shot quality

The team somehow always gets cursed with weird crap like that. I noticed too that the defense really hasn't been that bad. Somehow players just seem to play more confident against us and go at us. And make shots they shouldn't normally!

[EricaLubarsky]

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

Now Barnes unlikely vs Minny via Price. Ugh...

link? I don't see it

[joemoeschmoe]

Could the Dallas Mavericks be better than they've looked so far this season?

After Friday's 116-107 loss to the undefeated Toronto Raptors, the Mavericks are 2-3, with losses to two other teams that picked near the top of the 2018 lottery in the Atlanta Hawks and Phoenix Suns. All of that seems right in line with expectations for a team that won 24 games last year and had a preseason over/under total of 36 wins from the Westgate SuperBook Las Vegas.

Yet a closer look at the types of shots Dallas is getting, and forcing at the other end, suggests the Mavericks could be better than their record appears. Might Dallas be an under-the-radar playoff contender?

Early shot quality more predictive than shot making

Second Spectrum's camera-tracking data helps us divide the early results we see from teams in terms of shooting into shot quality (as measured by quantified shot quality, qSQ, the average effective field-goal percentage we'd expect given the type and location of the shots and nearby defenders) and shot making (as measured by qSI, quantified shooter impact, the difference between teams' qSQ and their actual effective field goal percentage, eFG).

Much as we've seen in the playoffs, while shot making has more impact on early wins and losses, it's shot quality that has more long-term predictive power. Second Spectrum's data set goes back to the 2013-14 season. During that span, shot making (qSI) explains about three-quarters of a team's performance in terms of effective field goal percentage during the first five games of the season. However, looking forward to the rest of the season, shot quality (qSQ) has about four times more predictive power than shot making.
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The results are even more striking when we look at the best and worst teams in terms of shot making (qSI) through the first five games. The 20 teams in that span (out of 150 total) with the highest qSI through five games saw their eFG drop by 1.9 percentage points from the first five games to the remainder of the season, while the bottom 20 improved by 4.5 percentage points, largely eliminating the huge gap in their shooting over the first five games. (That the improvement is larger for poor-shooting teams than the decline is for good-shooting ones suggests the latter is more likely skill and the former more likely noise.)

The effect is even stronger on defense, where teams that hold opponents to below-average shooting given the quality of those shots in the first five games have almost no advantage at all the rest of the season over defenses that allow above-average shooting in the first five games.

These findings are consistent with other research on shooting early in the season, including Ben Falk's subscription analysis on Cleaning the Glass last year that showed the location of shots is far more consistent with results the rest of the season than shooting percentage by location. Second Spectrum data simply enhances this conclusion by accounting for the location of nearby defenders and shot type in addition to simply where the shot was taken.
Mavericks getting good shots, opponents hitting tougher ones

During the first few games of this season, no team's results have been more removed from the quality of the shots they're getting and allowing than Dallas. The Mavericks' offensive qSQ (54.1 percent) ranks third in the league, but their actual 51.1 percent effective shooting is just 17th -- worse than league average. It's the reverse at the other end of the court, where Dallas' opponents have the ninth-worst shot quality (51.7 percent) but have actually posted a league-high 57.6 percent eFG.

The Mavericks' shot quality starts at the 3-point line. Dallas is averaging 40 3-point attempts per game, or 43 percent of the team's shot attempts -- a rate surpassed in NBA history only by the last two Houston Rockets teams. (The Rockets and Milwaukee Bucks are also ahead of that pace, both attempting 3s on 45 percent of their shots.)

Last season, more than 20 percent of the Mavericks' shot attempts were 2-pointers outside the paint. That's declined all the way to 8.7 percent so far this year, the league's fifth-lowest rate. While the return of Harrison Barnes (who made his 2018-19 debut Friday) and Dirk Nowitzki should increase that figure -- both players ranked in the NBA's top 25 in 2-point attempts per game outside the paint in 2017-18, per NBA Advanced Stats -- getting up 3s has clearly been a focus for Carlisle.

So far, Dallas has shot just 33 percent on those 3-point attempts, good for 23rd in the league. But the Mavericks haven't had to sacrifice shot quality for volume, and odds are that J.J. Barea (26 percent) and Dennis Smith Jr. (22 percent) will shoot closer to their career marks going forward.

Conversely, Dallas opponents have shot a league-best 48 percent from 3-point range, which is obviously unsustainable. (Just two teams have ever had opponents shoot better than 40 percent on 3s for a full season: the 2008-09 Sacramento Kings and 2010-11 Cleveland Cavaliers.) As Falk noted on Twitter, his research found little carryover between the percentage opponents shot on 3s during the season's first few games (he used a seven-game cutoff) and the rest of the season. This is almost certainly a fluke.

When the shooting evens out, it should reveal the Mavericks playing above-average defense. They've allowed opponents 3-point attempts at a league-average rate and rank in the top 10 in preventing shots at the rim.

Taking and allowing good shots is no guarantee of success, as last year's Brooklyn Nets demonstrated. In a mailbag last season, I found that Brooklyn had the largest advantage in terms of qSQ in the league, yet the Nets still won just 28 games. However, Brooklyn's performance was an outlier. For the most part, teams that get far better shots than their opponents are at worst playoff-caliber teams. (The other top four teams by this metric all made the playoffs, and three of them won at least one series there.)
2018-19 Net Shot Quality (qSQ)
Team Net qSQ
Utah 4.7
Milwaukee 4.5
Atlanta 2.5
Dallas 2.4
Denver 2.3
Brooklyn 2.0
Source: Analysis of Second Spectrum data

We'll see whether the Mavericks (and the Hawks, whose shot quality more closely matches their actual shooting so far) are this year's equivalent of the Nets, incapable of making enough of the good shots they're generating. But if the shot making for Dallas evens out at both ends, the Mavericks could be a playoff contender sooner than anyone anticipated.

[EricaLubarsky]

Spalding
Kostas
Macon

All going to GLeague

[burner2014]

Question , are there any post game press conferences or interviews available anywhere as a video? Can't find them

[DevinHarriswillstart]

Wow, this guy is a true MFFL...

https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dal...llas-mavericks

[MavzMan]

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

Wow, this guy is a true MFFL...

https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dal...llas-mavericks

Can you post the article in here? I don't have paid sub and from the title of the article, it looks like a good one to read.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by MavzMan

Can you post the article in here? I don't have paid sub and from the title of the article, it looks like a good one to read.

Meet the newly honored UT Southwestern biochemist who named his breakthrough discovery after the Dallas Mavericks
https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dal...llas-mavericks


There are relatively few people about whom it genuinely can be said have changed the world. UT Southwestern biochemist Dr. Zhijian "James" Chen is one of them.

On Oct. 17, Dr. Chen was named winner of the prestigious 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his 2012 discovery of an enzyme (cGAS) that launches the body's immune defense against infections and cancers. During a televised ceremony on Nov. 4 in the Silicon Valley, Dr. Chen and three fellow winners each will receive $3 million prizes.

"Great," you're probably thinking at this point, "but why is this post on sportsdaydfw.com?"

It's because news of Chen's prestigious honor led to SportsDay's discovery that he is a Dallas Mavericks fan. And he's not just any ole fan who just happens to be a noted scientist.

Dr. Chen, with another groundbreaking discovery in 2005 that preceded cGAS, incorporated his basketball fandom and scientific prowess with a unique homage to his favorite team. He and one of his students, Rashu Seth, discovered a protein that is pivotal in immune defense against RNA viruses.

Please allow Dr. Chen to explain how this protein came to be, as far as anyone knows, the only one ever named after a basketball franchise:

"At the time we discovered this protein, we knew it's very important in immunity defense against viruses. But we didn't know how this protein works. So initially, it was a completely novel protein. Initially we had a different name.

"But then we found that this protein is localized on the mitochondrial surface. The mitochondrial is sort of the powerhouse of our cells. ... It's very important. A lot has been done in regard to mitochondrial. And then we discovered that this protein is sort of anchored to the mitochondrial surface. And we know that this mitochondrial localization is very important.

"So we wanted to have a name that reflects this mitochondrial connection, to start with 'M.' At the time, the Dallas Mavericks were playing the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. That's how we got the inspiration: How about we call it MAVS -- Mitochondrial Anti-Viral Signaling?"

Chen, 52, grew up in an isolated village of China's Fujian Province. A top score on an undergrad biochemistry exam earned him a grad school spot at the State University of New York in Buffalo, leading him, eventually, to UT Southwestern Medical Center in 1997.

Chen currently is UT Southwestern's Professor of Molecular Biology and Director of the Center for Inflammation Research, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

When I asked Chen to explain the most tangible benefits his MAVS discovery has produced in the past 13 years, he did so in a way even a sportswriter can understand.

"This discovery has led to a much better understanding of our immune defense against infections by viruses such as the influenza virus, such as Ebola virus, or Zika virus," he said. "In the past decade or so, we have understood a lot better about its pathway -- and MAVS is a central player in this pathway.

"People who work on anti-virus immunity know about this protein. Our paper has been cited more than 2,000 times by colleagues who have published in the past 13 years. So it has had a large impact in terms of understanding immunology.

"And also, this protein now has been linked to autoimmune diseases, as well. It's hoped that by targeting this pathway, we might be able to come up with better therapies for these autoimmune diseases."

I then asked Dr. Chen whether his discoveries might have sports ramifications.

"It's not an area that we are focusing on, sports medicine and injuries," he said. "But injuries can certainly trigger inflammation -- pain, swelling, sometimes fever. Those are all symptoms of tissue injuries, which can activate this inflammation. Through either MAVS or another protein we discovered called cGAS.

"I think they are certainly linked to inflammation. It's very important ... A lot of these are sort of acute injuries. People can recover from these injuries, but sometimes these injuries can lead to longer-term consequences. We hope that the better studies of mechanisms of inflammation will help alleviate long-term damage from sports injuries."

One might think that being so busy changing the world would not leave Dr. Chen much time for basketball-watching. But that would not be accurate, certainly not when it comes to his favorite team.

Chen said he has attended numerous Mavericks games over the years, and he of course was thrilled when they avenged their 2006 NBA Finals loss to the Heat by beating them in the 2011 Finals.

"It's fun," he said. "I was thinking about getting season tickets, but so far have not done it yet."

Perhaps Mavericks owner Mark Cuban can come up with a unique deal for one of his team's most unique fans. Call it "the discount for noted local scientists who name their breakthrough discovery after the Mavericks."

[j0Shi]

https://theathletic.com/631137/2018/...mal-2-7-start/

1. Play DFS > Wes
2. Play Kleber
3. Put ball in Luka's hands
4. Defense

Good to see others having the same opinions as us fans. His take about Wes largely matches what we have been saying. DFS is the better fit in the starting unit while Wes could bring his pseudo-playmaking to the second unit (until Dirk comes back).

Full article on the Mavs Sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mavericks/c..._will_fix_the/

[EricaLubarsky]

@bobbykaralla

Luka Doncic ranks 12th in the NBA in front court touches per game. More than LeBron, George, Leonard, Antetokounmpo, DeRozan, Beal, and all but 11 other players in the whole NBA.

Seems like Luka is getting touches. It’s just the rest of the team that is trash and not sure we can just go to Luka every single play and expect to win. I’m already worried that we’re wearing him down now.